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Being a human, it's a given that everybody will be wrong at some point of other. Listening to authority on a certain subject, you can only adjust down the probability of them being wrong. Words are, after all, just words, and the only measure is verifiable experiment.

Well, I've flashed bioses, firmwares and roms for 20 years, and never once bricked anything. Maybe that's because I usually read the instructions carefully and follow them religiously. I say this is the case of RTFM.

I've found nirvana with Nokia N9. I get root access shell without breaking anything. ssh into the phone. apt-get at leisure. Phone feels great, works a treat as a phone, camera is cool, battery lasts long and I'm not wanting for features or apps. Survived many a fall to tarmac or concrete. Knocking up apps in Qt is a doddle. I know it's not going to last, but for now it's as good as it gets.

There are ways to instigate a change without being loud about it. When you write your code, write it pretty, well documented and with great unit tests. When you are releasing, write good release notes. When you are in charge of a feature, do good code reviews. Make code review templates. Write good documentation. See what happens.
If you really want to put this on the corporate agenda, you need to convince the person making technical decisions. If this gets on his or her agenda, things will happen. Beware when approaching this person - you've been thinking about this for weeks or months, while it may be quite a new idea for them. It may take a while for things to sink in. Don't expect it will happen quickly, or even the way you think is right. Plant the seeds and tend to them as they grow. Be prepared for resistance among coders too - writing docs, tests and releases are rarely seen as very compelling work, especially with tight deadlines.
Before doing anything though, you need to think about how important this is to the business. To you, it may seem like a very important thing and a complete no-brainer. However, you may not have all the information necessary to make this decision for the business. To the product and business people, the opposite may equally seem like a no brainer. All they care about is that it does the job and hits the market when they need it. Tech leaders are often enslaved to this kind of stuff.
Also, in my experience, many times a rewrite / major refactoring ends up costing too much and producing little benefit in the long run. Old idisyncracies are replaced by new ones and key sections of the code - often most critical to the business - end up scarred by changes around them and not better in any way. Be prepared to encounter people with similar experience and perhaps a bit of resistance along those lines.

Why do you keep referring to the latest release as a patch and a bugfix? The only change was in configuration - while before you could run unsigned applers, now you can only run signed ones. No patching / clever bugfixing was involved.
And in response to commenter suggesting putting Java-in-browser out of misery, the last 'patch' was designed to do just that. The only way to decently run an applet is to have it signed by expensive code signing certs.

This post is horrendous. Apart from plugging in several links that fail any notability test, the case is not notable either as there are much cooler and much more expensive cases around, the video is cropped to oblivion and player controls don't fit in the video frame either. If only I could fathom why did I waste another minute on commenting???

Technologies like this are very expensive to develop, test and prove safe, and then also commercialise on a large enough scale to pay off the huge initial investment. There is perhaps the analogy with our use of silicon in electronics. There are some cool alternative technologies with huge potential, but we still use silicon because we have invested in capacity, and tech has been honed by 50 years of continual, global investment in R&D and fabrication.
I've been following the thorium story for years. I'll believe it's time has come when large industry players announce commercial reactors. I don't believe for a second that a startup or a small lab can sustain the level of investment or have scale of capability to commercialise technology like this one.

After pj's opened nearby, my kid wanted to try their pizza. I included my mobile in the online order because we were on our way home - in case delivery arrives before we do. I was completely unprepared for the torrent of messages that has ensued. It took me weeks and many calls to get messages to stop. I only bought their pizza 2 or 3 times since, always in shop, always refusing to provide any details no metter how adamant they were (they want it all btw) and only paying cash.

Just finished re-reading the Time Machine by H G Wells today, which romanticises along similar lines - as far as the future is concerned.
While decay has been assumed for a while (not least by MJ's Idiocracy) I suppose the novelty in this paper is extrapolation to the past. Nice one.

Most organisations - commercial and governmental - have to conduct business under certain rules. I don't like being on CCTV, but here in London they have become a part of life through reducing insurance to businesses and yes, reduction in street and public transport crime.
Joe Random on the street with a camera is a different proposition. A much more menacing one. First, you immediately know you are dealing with a nutjob, who's focused on you. Second, you don't expect any scrupules from said nutjob, or that he'll lose his job or get in hot water if he misuses the footage - a reasonable expectation for CCTV camera operators.
The difference is accountability.

Cheap car-cams are all over ebay - for about £30 + sd card, you can get motion activated, hd cams with substantial lithium batteries and a range of features. Some are crap, some are awesome - use common sense when sorting through ebay...
Most can also chop (e.g. 1 hour blocks) and cycle (e.g. auto-delete oldest). Depending on your quality settings, sd card size etc, you may be able to leave it until there is something dumped (as long as you check and recharge / replace battery occasionally).
Beware of trees though - wind can trigger motion sensors and easily eat up batteries.